Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
I am Luis Paredes. I’m commissioner of the housing regulatory board. It’s the regulatory
agency of the Philippine government, charged with providing assistance to the whole government
unit in the formulation of the vision of the comprehensive land use plans. And also regulate
the real estate business in the Philippines.
There has been in existence a group specifically concerned with sustainability and climate
change disaster risk reduction management. However, this group has not received much
government support until lately when the country was visited by a lot of calamities, like typhoons
and earthquakes where the government suddenly realised the importance of giving support
to this group.
Well, it’s probably insofar as this concept of sustainability is concerned the Philippines
is still in its nascent stages. It does not yet fully integrated the need for climate
change measures.
Well, in housing where I am focused right now, we are not really focused so much on
the indicators whatever because our funding is not that much and we have a lot of communities
which we need to build houses for, especially the informal settlers. And right now most
of our funds, government funds, are spent on providing, what do you call this, bridge
financing to our informal settlers for their daily needs rather than on the more substantial
process of educating them on the need for a change of culture in this culture in our
country right now. Well, there’s some economic sense in that because as one politician said,
“If you give money to the poor you will be sure that they will spend it in the country.
But if you give money to the rich they’ll spend it outside.” So it’s better to spend
our funds right now giving it to the poor rather than to the rich in terms of loans
and so on.
I don’t think that we could really standardise sustainability because each country has its
own peculiar needs and characteristics. Like, for example, I’m not sure so far as I have
read during the lectures here. I’m not sure that these things are applicable or these
ideas are applicable in the Philippine setting as of now.
Well, I’m thinking of – and I’m really interested in hearing about this renewable
energy concept, no, because right now the problem we have right now is keeping the cost
down because most of these measures or strategies would entail a lot of capital and that is
what my country is short of right now. So we build houses in the traditional way, we
just put them up, put a sewage system which is sometimes not even that effective, but
it’s cheap. So that’s what we do right now. But we’re thinking right now of creating
one community in a desolate place, and that is why I am here right now, I want to get
some ideas on how we could start building this community.
We would need the inputs from the group regarding the economic side, the economic indicators
and also the ecological indicators specifically insofar as their experiences regarding areas
which are relatively isolated and relatively desolate in terms of there are no businesses
there or any economic activity happening there. So I’m thinking what their ideas are regarding
how we could provide for the livelihood of the targeted beneficiaries of this project
which is about 100,000 families which we will be dedicated from the danger prone areas in
metro Manila.
Well, as I said we are now in the midst of planning an entire community out of an area
which was previously devastated by the eruption of the Mountain. And I was hoping to get some
inputs or ideas regarding the development of this area in terms of sustainability, economic,
social and cultural sustainability, especially considering that one of our problem areas
there is there are indigenous peoples who refuse to live in that community and would
rather live in their previous abodes in the mountains. So that’s one of our – but
most of all I would like to get idea on this renewable energy concept, specifically on
solar energy and biogas.
Yes, especially considering that we do not have limitless resources and we are rich in
resources which use this technology, like solar. We have sunlight almost more than one
half of the day, or more than 12 hours. And we also have wind, we have strong winds also,
and well, insofar as biogas is concerned 100,000 families that translates to about half a million
people and that’s a lot of gas. So that’s why I am here right now looking for ideas
on how to build this community.